Decrements in performance observed in middle aged and older persons are often related to disease processes rather than normal changes in CNS and PNS functioning. Clearly, cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease are related to impaired intellectual functioning and slowing of response. Moreover, middle aged and elderly subjects with essential hypertension perform more poorly on tasks which require rapid responding under time pressure. A critical question from the standpoint of occupational rehabilitation, counseling and selection of medication is the specific nature of the slowing of response, e.g., is it related to inability to shift attention, impaired encoding ability, impaired retrieval from short term memory, or uniform slowing in multiple aspects of information processing? We have studied the precise nature of response slowing in healthy active aging subjects with a paradigm which permits separation of specific information processing abilities. Response slowing was observed to be more significant between young and middle aged persons than between middle aged and older persons. With one exception, recall, it was generally not more apparent for specific skills. Our objective is to use this information processing paradigm in order to answer the following questions: 1) does impairment in specific information processing skills develop at an early age for hypertensive subjects; 2) are some skills more adversely affected than others; 3) does the disparity in response speed between hypertensive and nonhypertensive patients increase with increasing age; 4) how do hypertensive persons with heart disease (specifically, myocardial infarctions or arteriosclerosis) perform in relation to hypertensive persons free from heart disease?